


In the Eyes of an Outlaw

by misstriplem



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Ghost Arthur Morgan, Video Game: Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), arthur morgan - Freeform, red dead redemption 2 au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:54:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26828455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misstriplem/pseuds/misstriplem
Summary: You decide to tag along with your friends, Tammy and Kyle, on a ghost hunting trip to the old Valentine saloon, which has now been converted to be part of an outdoor, wild west museum. Once there, you discover that there are more secrets hidden in the darkness that you could have possibly imagined.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	In the Eyes of an Outlaw

**Author's Note:**

> I am particularly fond of ghost hunting shows. Since we're in spooky season, this little ditty just popped into my head and I felt compelled to write it. The idea of Valentine being converted into an outdoor museum with reenactments comes from a famous local haunt in my parts called Wild West City.

The dust clawed down your throat and settled heavily in your lungs.

You brushed an errant cobweb from your face, wincing at the delicate strands as they refused to disengage from your skin. The thin beam of your flashlight barely lit the oppressive curtain of darkness; all you could make out were vague, sporadic shapes in the otherwise vast, empty space.

Tammy stumbled in behind you. True to form, her foot caught on the ledge of the now open window, sending her careening into the darkness and her flashlight skittering across the floor. You barely had time to turn and grab her arm before she collided with the dust-covered, somewhat rotted wooden floor.

“Honestly,” you muttered irritably under your breath. “Could you _not_ try to hurt yourself for five minutes?”

“Sorry,” she whispered as she tugged her arm free from your grasp. Tammy hurried across the floor and fetched her light, twisting and turning it to check that the bulb hadn’t shattered. A cold, biting chill nipped the back of your neck. You shuddered, your heart racing despite your insistence to the contrary, and turned over your shoulder for the source of the disturbance.

The window through which you and Tammy had climbed through was still wide open, letting in the autumn evening and inviting any stray eye to note that the museum’s window was open, despite the padlocked door and the clearly posted sign that read SORRY, PARTNER! WE’RE CLOSED.

You let out a sigh and tugged on the window. It resisted before suddenly and loudly slamming shut, drawing a loud, frightened gasp from Tammy.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” you said as you dusted your hand off on your sweatshirt. You swept your light around the room as you rejoined your friend, taking in the sights that the old saloon had to offer.

Valentine had been nothing more than a ghost town for years before the historical society fixed it up. Most of the buildings, including the old church and its accompanying cemetery, had been torn down and the bodies reinterred elsewhere. The old gun shop was still there, along with the sheriff’s office, the general store, and the saloon, of course. But the rest of the town had faded along with the history that had brought to such vibrant and violent life, falling prey to the wiles of civilization and the persistence of modernization. The county had managed to save some of the old buildings for posterity’s sake and turned the former livestock town into a small, humble outdoor museum.

Your parents had taken you here as a kid, back when they made a grand show of New Hanover’s budding tourism enterprise. Back then, the folks who owned the former town had done their best to recreate an old west experience—they’d hired employees to man the shops and pose as a sheriff looking for any brave enough to fetch a few dangerous bounties; they’d even staged the old Valentine bank robbery, where members of the infamous Van der Linde Gang had taken what money Valentine had and left a trail of bodies in their wake. It was, perhaps, the most exciting (albeit tragic) event in Valentine’s past; you supposed you couldn’t fault the county for wanting to earn a bit of money from ill deeds, if it meant drawing folk to the otherwise sleepy state of New Hanover.

“Where’s Kyle?” you whispered, strangely afraid to raise your voice in the darkness. The memories of a town’s lost livelihood had unwittingly stirred up the strange sensation of being watched, one you attributed more to darkness and flailing flashlights than actual paranormal activity.

His answering call came from somewhere above them. “Up here!”

Tammy’s light flicked toward the back staircase, where the old barber’s station still loomed, its replicated tools seemingly eager for new customers. You made your slow way up the stairs, taking care to hold tightly to the railing. The wood creaked as you climbed and the hollow, dissonant echo of your footsteps made your fingers tighten a bit around the aging rail.

You felt Tammy’s dissent as you reached the first landing, turned left, and continued up the final set of stairs. “I don’t know about this,” she whispered to you.

You rolled your eyes. She’d been thrilled at the thought of breaking into the old saloon and conducting an amateur investigation. Rumors of ghosts and cowboy hauntings had pervaded Valentine since the early days of its renovation into a tourist trap. You’d read up on the rumors, carefully skimming the tales before your ghostly excursion. Most of them were bullshit, plain and simple; the only ones that had any sort of credence were the ones from current and former employees, all who spoke about the saloon being the most haunted of all the remaining buildings.

One account had stuck out to you—a man named Barry, if you remembered correctly, who had worked for the Valentine Historical Society as the saloon’s faux bartender, had listed his story up on the Weird New Hanover website. He’d locked up one night after the town had closed for business when he’d discovered something odd and troubling at the railing of the upper floor.

It’d been quick, he’d written, perhaps too quick for him to make any sort of sense out of it. But he described in detail a man, his arms draped lazily over the railing and his hat pulled low over his eyes. Despite the quickness of the glance, Barry had been able to tell precisely what the man had been wearing: a worn, tan jacket over a blue striped shirt with a pair of faded, dark pants. Barry had also noted the presence of a gun belt and a pair of spurred, well-used boots.

His post had surmised the apparition to be none other than Arthur Morgan, enforcer of the state’s most notorious gang. His name was listed on a handful of the plaques around the museum-town; the gang had occupied and torn through New Hanover for a few months before moving to Lemoyne and then back up into the wilds of Roanoke Ridge. Of all the outlaws from the gang that the plaques described, Arthur Morgan had always held a particular interest to you, though you could never quite explain why.

You shuddered again, resolving that it was best to keep the errant thoughts out of your mind for a while. You nudged Tammy with your elbow and murmured, “It’s alright. Kyle’s done this before, hasn’t he?”

“So he says,” Tammy answered, though her resolve seemed to slip at the thought of their preordained task. “I’m just not sure if we should be poking around with all this paranormal stuff, you know?”

You both crept along the landing to where the faint glow of candles could be seen on the far side. “You were the one who wanted to see a ghost, Tammy.”

She let out a sigh. Though the light was sparse, you could see her tuck a strand of her wild, curly hair behind her ear. “I just don’t want to get, like, _possessed_ or anything.”

You felt a smirk creep onto your lips. “You could totally spin that into a T.V. show, you know.”

Tammy shoved you playfully in the shoulder as you chuckled, holding tightly to the brief but welcome moment of levity. When you reached the circle of candles and spotted the hunched form of Kyle, you doused your flashlights and sat carefully beside him. He held a slim, silver-colored recorder up to his mouth and, after flicking on the switch, tested the device.

“Testing, testing. Kyle, Tammy, and Y/N on the second floor of Valentine saloon on Saturday, October fourth. Mom, if you’re listening to this and I’m in jail, I _swear_ I wasn’t breaking and entering—the window was totally already open.”

“Oh my god,” you lamented as you placed a hand to your head. “It works, Kyle. Let’s get this over with, please.”

He held up his hands to ward off any more of your retorts. “Jeez, fine. We won’t be long, anyway. I heard they’re upping security here after some other ghost hunting groups started going to all the places where the Van der Lindes stayed.”

Tammy frowned as she cupped her chin in her hands. “That’s a ton of places, though.”

Kyle nodded eagerly as he set the recorder carefully onto the ground. He’d also set up an Ouija board, newly purchased and ready for use. “I heard one of them got evidence of John Marston over at Beecher’s Hope.”

This piqued your interest. John Marston was perhaps one of the more well-known members, seeing as how he got out when things reportedly went south. A lot of local historians who’d analyzed the journal they’d found tucked away in Marston’s home say he credited Arthur Morgan with saving him from the demise of the gang before he died, though no one was ever able to corroborate the story. The only thing people knew for sure came from old medical records from Saint Denis that revealed Arthur Morgan had contracted tuberculosis—essentially, a death sentence. There was nothing else after that.

It had always nagged at you—the uncertainty of his fate and the one unexpected act that seemed entirely overshadowed by a career formed on killing and stealing.

“Anyway,” Kyle said as he rubbed his hands with anticipation. “We’ll keep the recorder on during the session and check for EVPs later.” He gestured to the both of them and added, “Ladies first.”

Tammy glanced hesitantly at the planchette. Your chest felt unusually tight and the silent voice at the back of your head warned you against meddling in the affairs of the dead and forgotten. But another part of you, one that craved answers to the questions that had burned in you since childhood, begged to know what had happened to the outlaw damned by fate and history. You took a steadying breath and placed the tips of your fingers on the white plastic piece. Tammy muttered an edict of self-confidence as she followed suit; Kyle squeezed his fingers in between both of yours.

“Okay,” he whispered with an excited smile. “Here we go.”

You kept your muscles intentionally taut as you stared at the board with its bold letters and symbols. The autumn chill seemed to pervade the air inside the saloon, and you used your free hand to tug your sweatshirt a bit tighter around your shoulders. Tammy’s eyes danced through the darkness, her mouth a tight line, her attention intentionally everywhere else except for the spirit board.

Kyle nodded to himself, straightened, and said, “We’d like to speak to the spirits that are here in the Valentine saloon. We ask that you step forward and tell us who you are.”

Nothing happened. The silence lingered, becoming more tangible and oppressive with every passing second. Tammy’s shoulders tightened as she stared at the planchette, fear already written across her features. Your eyes darted around the upper floor without meaning to, searching through the almost total darkness for something, anything, that might be out of the ordinary.

You were so intent on what was _not_ in the darkness that you didn’t realize the planchette had begun to move.

Tammy gasped, covering her mouth with her opposite hand. Kyle’s eyes were wide with shock, but he remained silent, his eyes focused with intention on the board. The device moved slowly and your mind whirled; cool, clear rationalization dictated that either Kyle or Tammy were moving the planchette; your fingertips were barely attached to it.

The tip stopped at the first letter: M.

A terrible thrill swept through you. The planchette moved again, with swift determination, to the next two letters.

O. R.

“Oh my god,” you breathed, hardly realizing you’d said the words out loud. Your stomach tightened, the feeling almost painful, as your heart slammed against your ribs.

The next letters came precisely as you’d expected.

G. A. N.

An unspeakable shock of cold energy sparked in your hand. You cried out and pulled it away, cradling it to your chest. Your heartbeat pounded in your ears, momentarily drowning out the silence. You stared at the board, the letters forming over and over in your head, spelling out the one name you hadn’t realized you’d so badly wanted to see.

MORGAN _._ It had to be him. It _had_ to be.

“Holy shit,” Tammy breathed as her eyes darted between your hand and the board. “Is that who I think it is?”

Kyle shook out his hands and stared between the two of you. “Arthur Morgan,” he muttered in disbelief.

The residue of the shock faded, leaving your skin humming with its lingering effect. Your heart hadn’t slowed its pace, beating out a rhythm of wary, tentative anticipation. The idea of ghost hunting hadn’t excited you the way it did Kyle and Tammy, but now… _now_ you understood.

Something shifted in the darkness. Your head snapped up toward the upper landing as your eyes tried and failed to properly settle on the thick, impenetrable shadows. You weren’t sure, but you thought that maybe something had moved there, something wispy but decidedly human-shaped. Your mind was probably playing tricks on you, you reasoned, though you were almost certain that the human-shaped shadow had on what looked like a wide-brimmed hat…

You turned back to Kyle, your eyes dipping to the recorder. “Do you have headphones to go with that?”

He frowned but nodded. “Yeah, why?”

You held out your hand and flexed your fingers in anticipation. “I want to do live playback downstairs.”

Tammy’s brow furrowed in confusion. “But we just started the—”

“Yeah, I know,” you bit back, your tone bordering on irritation. “You guys can still do the spirit board. I’ll just work downstairs for a while.”

Kyle let out a sigh and reached around to the bag behind him. He pulled free a pair of white earbuds and placed them in your waiting palm. You smiled and snatched up the recorder, taking care to hit pause as you got to your feet.

“Make sure you hit record again when you stop moving,” he instructed as you grabbed your flashlight and flicked it on. “And say your name and where you’re recording.”

You barely heard him. Something was drawing you downstairs; the pull was magnetic, forceful, that couldn’t be overlooked or ignored. Every thought, every feeling of reluctance you’d felt on the drive here had fled, leaving behind the driving desire—the _need_ —to know if you’d finally found a chance to know the truth.

You clattered down the stairs, heedless of the prospect of being caught, and didn’t stop until you were in the middle of the saloon floor. The faint sound of Kyle and Tammy’s voices drifted through the dark, but you pushed them aside. You sat, folding your legs beneath you as your heart continued its rampant assault on your chest. You considered turning off the flashlight but, upon further consideration, chanced leaving it on. If you were going to see anything, you wanted to be sure of it.

A moment later, the headphones were plugged into the recorder and the buds sat firmly in your ears. Trembling fingers clutched at the tubular microphone and brought it up to your lips as you repeated the same mantra Kyle had earlier—your name, the date, and the location of your session. Then you paused, weeding through the chaos of questions roaming in your mind, and selected the first, perhaps most obvious one.

“Okay,” you breathed into the microphone. You shut your eyes—you weren’t sure why, but it seemed more intimate, as though anything you might hear might conjure up the images that would fuel the childhood fancies that had always lingered in your heart. “Are you Arthur Morgan?”

Nothing.

Natural, electronic buzzing filled your ears. You turned up the volume, wondering in a panicked moment if you’d had the sound off and had missed the answer. The futility of your excursion had just begun to settle on your shoulders when something came through the headphones.

A voice, barely a whisper, came through the recorder. It was gruff, made of hard edges and sorrow, but definitively masculine. More than that, though, was the fact that the word was crisp and clear, as though it’d been spoken directly to you.

“Yes.”

Your eyes flew open and you gasped, nearly dropping the recorder. Your cursed, fumbling the damned thing, and clutched it between your shaking hands. All the things you wanted to know, all the questions that begged to be asked, suddenly flitted from your mind.

You steadied your breathing, brought the microphone once more to your lips, and asked, “Why are you here?”

There was silence for a moment, but you bolstered through the impatience. Then came the answer: “Good times.”

You’d hoped for a bit more conversation, but something about the tone in Arthur’s voice told you that he’d always been a man of secrecy. Perhaps he was reluctant to trust someone new, to tell them what they wanted to know when they could offer nothing in return. In a strange turn of events, you had to remind yourself that Arthur Morgan had been dead for more than a hundred years; somewhere in the last few moments of unbridled excitement, you’d started thinking of him as a person rather than a potential spirit.

“Um, well,” you started, blinking in the ethereal balance of light and dark, “I guess…I guess there’s no other way to ask this, and I’m sorry, but…you know you’re dead, right?”

There was nothing for a while. When you started to lose hope, you heard, “Yeah.”

One rule of EVPs was validation. If you could get the spirit to tell you information that was documented fact, then it lent some credence to the idea of communication with the dead—or so they said. You cleared your throat and asked, “What did you die from?”

The spirit of Arthur Morgan replied, “T.B.”

“Oh shit,” you breathed, dropping the microphone for a moment. He’d used the abbreviation, but the answer was clear, nonetheless. Arthur Morgan had just confirmed the source of his own demise! The excitement you felt lasted only a moment before a sense of sweeping, encompassing sorrow and regret nearly overwhelmed you.

You thought of all the days riding in the sun, feeling the breath of the wind and relishing the sense of hard-won freedom. You recalled the agony of unimaginable loss and the sometimes-tenuous joy of camaraderie. But there was also clawing, desperate fear and the knowledge that the clock was ticking, that there wasn’t much time left and far too many wrongs that needed to be made right…

“Stop it,” you blurted, your voice torn and ragged from the broad scape of emotions that had nearly ripped you apart. You placed a hand on your head as you slowly returned to your sense of self, despite the strange, hollow feeling that left a hole in your heart.

His voice answered you, the tone vaguely apologetic. “Didn’t…have a…choice.”

_It’s the only way you could understand_. You felt more than heard the unspoken words. The paranormal shows you’d watched had warned against opening oneself too much to spirit. It was like opening a door you might not be able to close, and Arthur had taken advantage of your unwitting offer. For one single moment, one space of a heartbeat, you’d felt what he’d felt in life. All those ridiculous cowboy shows you’d seen performed in Valentine, all those old western movies that claimed to depict the reality of the old west, all paled in comparison to what you knew Arthur had experienced.

All of it was unequivocally bullshit.

But there was still more to ask, so much more to know and understand. You settled in as a strange sense of calm came over you. “John Marston says you saved him before you died,” you said softly.

“I did,” came the answer. You thought that there was a sense of humility about the words, a feeling that it wasn’t an act of obligation but a last, remarkable act of righteousness that had gone almost entirely unnoticed.

You frowned as you considered Marston. He’d had a wife and a son; his wife, Abigail, had died a few years after him, though no one quite knew why. Jack, on the other hand, had gone on to live a quiet, unremarkable life before military records indicated he was drafted during the Great War. There weren’t any death records for him; much like the secrets of the gang into which he was born, Jack Marston’s fate was left up to interpretation and assumption. But if John had a family, then did Arthur?

The question felt odd on your tongue. “Were you ever married?”

There was another long, tense pause before he answered. “Almost,” he breathed. The next word was wistful, the tone of it sad, like the sound of broken promises. “Mary.”

Mary? The name didn’t ring a bell at all. You shrugged and pressed further. “So, you _didn’t_ marry her? Why not?”

“Weren’t…meant to be,” Arthur replied. The sadness was back in his voice again, though you were starting to understand him enough to know he was doing his best to mask it. The few photos you’d seen of Arthur in history books and among the museum’s plaques had made it clear that he was handsome, in a rugged, angry sort of way. You knew it was wrong, but you felt a sort of shrill sense of gladness that he hadn’t been married, after all.

You cleared your throat, banishing the thought. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out. You must have been lonely.”

_Ain’t nothing to be sorry about_. Again, you felt the words and the emotion behind them, a far more clear and heartfelt answer than the simple albeit thrilling responses you got through the recorder.

The next question you asked was the one that had stumped historians and theorists alike. You weren’t entirely sure Arthur would answer, but there seemed no harm in trying.

“What happened?” you asked, straining your ears for any sound. “To the gang, I mean.”

_The sound of raucous laughter and the scent of campfire._

_A distant, emphatic voice filled with empty promises and false convictions._

_The sense of wrongness that pervaded nearly every waking moment, tainting years—decades—of blind, unwitting trust._

When you finally came back to yourself, your head was in your hands and the flashlight had been knocked over. Your chest heaved, each breath painful and strangely heavy, as though they were reluctant to provide you with enough air to dispel the foreign memories in your mind.

After a long moment, you straightened, took a long, slow breath, and closed your eyes. “It was Dutch’s fault,” you said. Dutch Van der Linde, the erstwhile leader of the gang, had been known for his charisma as much as his ruthless, cutthroat propensity for violence. You supposed it made sense; history said that Marston had been forced by the Pinkertons to track Dutch down and kill him, effectively putting an end to several decades’ worth of terrorism.

It was a surprise, then, to hear the vehement, snarling response come through the headphones. “ _Micah_.”

You balked and let the name linger for a moment. “Micah, as in Micah _Bell_?”

_Goddamn_ rat.

That was certainly an understatement. Not much was known about him, but most folk well versed in the history of Valentine and the gang knew that Micah Bell was as nasty as they came. His body and the remains of what law enforcement at the time believed to be a camp had been found not long after his death, but no other information had come of the gruesome discovery.

You decided it was time for a bit of levity. You allowed yourself a small smile and said into the mic, “Valentine’s a museum town now. They used to do stagecoach rides and staged shootouts when I was a kid.” You paused and the smile widened. “They even reenacted the bank heist. Some guy with a beer belly and a mustache played you.”

Incredulity flooded you along with the stark undertone of resentfulness. You laughed and, without thinking, added, “I know. It’s a shame—you were really handsome.”

Your heart fluttered wildly with panic. Why in the hell would you say that? Once again you reminded yourself of where you were, what you were doing: you were in an old, dusty saloon talking to the ghost of an outlaw who had once frequented these very halls. It was stupid and you began to wonder if maybe you’d lost your grip on reality.

The abashed, reluctant answer soothed you a bit. “Thanks…I guess.”

Footsteps clattered above you as the voices of Kyle and Tammy drifted down the stairs. You started, nearly jumping out of your skin, and stared at the beams of flashlights that pooled on the landing.

That was it, then.

You railed at the thought of cutting off the contact. Your hand tightened on the recorder, your thumb hovering over the stop button. It felt wrong to abandon Arthur; the world had already done that, effectively writing him out of the history that would have shed so much like on the old gangs of the west and the ties that irrevocably bound them to their livelihoods. There was still so much to learn about Arthur, so many pieces that still needed understanding; how could you possibly leave now?

“Y/N?” Kyle called as he peered down the stairs. “You okay?”

You moved the microphone away, fighting the sense of sorrow that weighed you down. “Yeah, I’m good,” you called back. “Just give me a minute.”

This wasn’t going to be the end. You knew it before the thoughts even took form in your head; you would find your way back here, as Arthur had so many years before. The bridges between worlds were waiting to be walked, and you intended on taking every step you could before you inevitably reached the end.

You pulled the mic in front of your lips. “I have to go now,” you whispered. “But I’ll come back, okay? I promise.”

It felt important to promise. More than that, it felt as though Arthur needed that promise—or, in a strange, unspeakable way, _required_ it.

The last response came through the headphones. “Catch you later, then.” It was the clearest, most articulate of all the responses. If you had kept your eyes closed, you would have sworn Arthur Morgan was right beside you, a wry, secretive grin on his lips as he tipped his hat in farewell.

Kyle didn’t understand why you wouldn’t give up the recorder, though he eventually seemed to buy your proposition of reviewing the recordings with your own computer before sharing them with your companions. They hadn’t gotten any other responses from the spirit board, though Tammy swore she heard bootsteps descending the stairs after you’d left. She even claimed to hear the sound of spurs, though Kyle said he hadn’t heard a thing.

You didn’t tell them about your exchange with Arthur. It was uniquely yours and yours alone, and it didn’t feel right to share what you’d learned with them. Arthur would understand, you thought, and the idea gave you some comfort despite the lie you held close to your heart.

One day, you’d come back. You’d made a promise, after all, and it was as good as a contract in the eyes of an outlaw.


End file.
